


Well Known Stranger

by andrea_deer



Series: 200 Prompts Challenge [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blood, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Jim Being Creepy, Killing, Malnutrition, Manipulation, Mind Games, Minor Injuries, Other, POV Sebastian Moran, Poor Sebastian, Possibly Pre-Slash, Psychological Torture, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Solitary Confinement, Torture, Violence, better to warn too much than not enough, feel free to ask for clarification, this fic is actually less scarry and dark than the tags suggest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 11:24:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4099246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andrea_deer/pseuds/andrea_deer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was woken with a start, when the food arrived, and for the first time in ages, for a brief moment, he forgot about the hunger.<br/>There were only thirty-four crosses on the wall opposite him.<br/>And underneath them, written in dirtied blood, there was a message:</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Good boy.</i></p><p> </p><p>~</p><p>Filled for thie prompt in 200 Prompts Meme (<a href="http://thenorthwing.livejournal.com/10960.html">LJ</a> | <a href="http://lordnochybaty.tumblr.com/post/101297508584/200-prompts-meme">Tumblr</a>): </p><p><b>Well known stranger</b> – BBC Sherlock fanon, Sebastian/Moriarty, first meeting face to face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Well Known Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to the amazing [frayer](http://frayer.livejournal.com/), who did amazing job as a beta-ing this story and making it so much better than it was before!

There were dark brown crosses on the wall, marking off the passing days. A horizontal line for the morning meal and a vertical line for the evening one. He used the wounds he arrived with first: his bloodied knuckles, split lip, cut eyebrow. When they healed, he ripped the scabs off and bit into his knuckles to get to the blood, to make that line at every meal.

It was important.

It was his coping mechanism, his defense against the timelessness. He knew this, he was trained and imprisoned by far smarter and more vicious people. He knew.  
He had no idea how often they fed him. Perhaps there were three meals a day not two. Perhaps there was only one. It could be random, designed to throw off his system. His sense of time was completely wrecked, when he finally fully woke up in this cell after they took him away to be interrogated. He didn’t know how many days he spent with the lamp light in his eyes, he didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious in the cell after they threw his broken body back. There was no window to see the sun and the light in the cell was always on, any way of judging the passing time was more or less a guess. It didn’t matter. The crosses were not there to be a reliable calendar, they were there to keep him sane. He knew this. Knew he was trained and imprisoned by far smarter and more vicious people than even himself. He knew.

The crosses failed. 

There were more smudges than there should be. 

Thirty-seven wobbly crosses.

It was only thirty-six before he’d been taken from the cell. Surely there were only thirty-six… Or thirty-five… Not thirty-seven, though. Definitely _not_ thirty-seven. He was thirty-seven, he’d remember that as he’d scored his knuckle against the wall, wouldn’t he?

The lightbulb flickered mockingly.

He stared at the last cross. It seemed like one of his… He jumped forward, pressing himself against the wall to look at it closely. 

He licked it. 

It tasted like blood, on the dirty wall… But was it his blood?

He wiped the little cross off angrily. It wasn’t right. He used one of the rags from his pitiful nest to scrub at the wall, as thoroughly as it was possible. 

He stared at the mark it left until the metal tray appeared in the tiny opening in the cell door. He bit his abused knuckle for a moment before carefully making a thick, horizontal line. His own this time, he could be sure. He looked at it for a bit before rushing towards his meal.

He took everything off the tray first. It was fixed to the door and couldn’t be moved. He was no longer stupid enough to leave valuable food there for long enough for it to be taken away. He tore the bread he was given into small bites and forced himself to eat it slowly, making it last. He drunk the bitter, black, grainy coffee even more slowly.  
Something weird was going on. Someone was playing with him, here, in his cell, where he should be safe. He started to move restlessly, to prepare his body for attack, to at least be able to move without wincing too much. The room was so small that if he stretched out his arms, he could touch both walls. He stood like that, stretching until both his bruised ribs and his stagnated muscles protested at the movement, but and then stood longer, until he panted in pain and exhaustion.

He lay on the rags and waited for his second meal. When it finally arrived, he the blood out of his wound once again and finished the cross for today before repeating the meal’s ritual. He left the single sugar cube until he was done with everything else, then he put it on his tongue in bliss. He held it there carefully, barely daring to suck on it, making sure it lasted as long as possible. It was one of the reasons why he never fully trusted the meals to be his guidelines in time, he never knew with which meal the sugar would arrive with, or if it would arrive at all. His first meal arrived without it, second with, third was again without any sugar and so he created the idea of two meals a day. It seemed to fit the hours he felt passing, messed up as his sense of time was. His fourth meal arrived without the sugarcube again and ruined the system, but the two-meal-day seemed to fit the hours he felt passing with his disrupted sense of time.

He’d been in the cell alone far too long. Thirty-seven days, if his system was right. Sometimes he wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been longer, much longer. Perhaps the meals came only once a day. The thought terrified him and gave him strength. That would mean he’d spent seventy-four days there. The time alone was terrifying, as was the notion he might never get out. On the other hand, he sometimes thought himself very sane for seventy-four days in a solitary cell. He could be proud of that.

 

When he awoke and looked to his calendar , he jumped away from it, pushing himself against the opposite wall. It was still far too close, but there was no way to get further away. He whimpered in panic. 

There were only thirty-six crosses on the wall.

He was losing his mind.

The metal clang of the tray appearing in the door opening made him jump and his heart hammered against his ribcage. He ate the meal quickly, with scarely time to think what he was doing. 

He bit into his knuckle hard, mangling the abused flesh to be sure he would have enough blood. He smeared one full cross to make up for the missing one and made another line for today’s meal. In the evening he completed the cross and lay on his rags, wide awake. He’d resolved to keep watch all night, but he was either even weaker than he thought or they were adding something to his food.

When he woke up there were thirty-five crosses.

His eyes kept drifting back to them all day. 

He ate his food and chugged his coffee, barely noticed continued lack of sugar cube and didn’t bother to corrected the crosses on the wall, nor to add a new one. He moved his rags to the wall opposite, so he could see his makeshift calendar better as he uneasily fell asleep.

He was woken with a start, when the food arrived, and for the first time in ages, for a brief moment, he forgot about the hunger.

There were only thirty-four crosses on the wall opposite him. 

And underneath them, written in dirtied blood, there was a message:

_Good boy._

He looked at his hand. All his scabs were ripped off, all of the wounds on his hands were opened. It was his blood. 

It was difficult to breathe for a long time, controlling his breaths and willing the panic away. Then he took his breakfast before someone else could take it from him and ate it carefully. It seemed he would be needing his strength. His calendar was now a count down. 

He stretched his muscles, weakened from disuse and malnutrition, wincing in pain as they reminded him of old injuries, but he created a passable exercise routine. He should be in slightly healthier shape if he could keep it up for the next thirty-four days.

As if to reward his attempts, there was an extra sugar cube added to his evening meal. 

 

Every single night one of the crosses was being wiped away. Sebastian stopped trying to catch whoever was doing it. 

Every time he got up to do his exercises he got sugar with his meal.

When after few days he could – and did – add pushups, he got butter with his bread.

Few days after that he increased the amount of exercise and found his rations doubled. 

Perhaps he was being treated like a dog and trained as one as well, but the rare treats were making him feel better and this was at least somehow intriguing.

 

On the day, when there was only one cross left, he no longer felt like he was barely surviving, stagnating, almost comatose, just trying to cope. He felt caged. He felt like Sebastian fucking Moran. Dishourable discharge, problem with authority and all. He exercised and barely stopped himself from continuing to the point of exhaustion. He would need to be able to move tomorrow. Either to move on, or to dismantle the cell brick by brick, to get out of here and get his hands on whoever was doing this to him. He would strangle them with his own hands, he thought viciously, smiling through his stomach crunches. He sat on his rags, when he felt he could not exercise any more. His reward was a warm meal, some kind of stew with potatoes, and he almost wept.

He didn’t even try to stay awake, though by now he knew he wouldn’t be able to. He was not supposed to and he was not going to. That was a simple truth and he accepted it along with everything else.

 

He woke up with a start and automatically grabbed at the man hovering over him. Sebastian’s hand closed around the smaller man’s throat, pressing against the white collar of a shirt. He was not hurting the man, just holding firmly in place as his brain woke up enough to decide what to do.

The man above him laughed. Sebastian could feel his throat quivering against his palm. The man half-slapped, half-patted him on the cheek. He was crouching next to Sebastian’s body, leaning over him, holding his weight on the right hand and touching Sebastian with his left. Sebastian could snap his neck.

“Now, now, no time to play, puppy. It’s time to walk you.”

The man grinned down at the stunned prisoner.

Sebastian let go off his neck and slowly stood up after the man did. He watched him closely, but he didn’t say a word. Judging by the smile and glint in the man’s eyes – he was pleased and amused by his wary anger. Sebastian stalked after him, out of the cell, through the narrow corridor. He could hardly believe he was outside his cell again and he took each step carefully, cat like – silent, ready to attack or bolt.

“You’re so well trained,” mocked the man, “And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

He shook his head, shrugging, as if disappointed in the lack of skills of other trainers. 

They walked through empty room after another empty room, encountering no one until a lone guard walked out in front of them. He seemed shocked to see anyone and did not react for a moment, faced with a mad grin of the stranger in a suit. Then he fumbled for his gun.

“Kill,” said Sebastian’s savior coldly.

Sebastian was ready to move already, but on the quick command he pounced. He grabbed the soldier’s gun, breaking his wrist in the process, and slammed him into the wall until his skull caved with a thickening crunch. The man slid to the floor leaving a streak of blood down the wall. Sebastian couldn’t help it. He swiped his hand across the streak, a huge, bloody cross on the wall. The man in a suit clapped his hands slowly.

“You’re really good,” he said approvingly. “And so artistic! I chose you well.”

“And what you’re going to do with me?” Sebastian asked, finally speaking, breaking his silence of many weeks. His throat ached and rasped, his voice more of a growl than anything else.

His savior came slowly closer, smiling brightly. He touched Sebastian’s face, petting it and Sebastian didn’t move, made sure not to move, to keep eye contact.

“I am going to have a lot of fun with you, Sebastian.” His grin was as mad as he was and Sebastian bared his teeth in an unfriendly smile.

He knew this man quite well, considering they’ve never met or talked before. This man broke into his cell, drugged him, used his blood to send him messages- - and Sebastian was rewarded, when he just went with it, when he stopped fighting. Now that the man was in front of him he knew he was dangerous, a maniac, but he wasn’t afraid. He would snap his neck too. And the necks of all those that came after him. He had nothing left to lose. He was curious though, let the little man try his games. He wondered how many people weren’t trembling in fear before this man and yet weren’t trying to stop him, just let him show off in his own time. He wondered how long he could not react.

“It’s polite to introduce yourself first,” said Sebastian dryly and enjoyed the grin once again spreading over the shorter man’s face.

“Jim Moriarty,” he said and this time Sebastian had to fight not to react. Judging by Moriarty’s expression, he was not as successful as he hoped. 

They’ve heard sounds of shouts and gunshots somewhere above them. Moriarty pouted dramatically and turned, walking in the direction they were headed before.

“Coming, tiger?” he called from few steps over, not even pausing.

Sebastian marched after him, quickly catching up. 

“Yes, boss,” he said easily.


End file.
